Blue horse, 1919

Heinrich Campendonk (1889–1957) created his first impressive renderings of animals during the years preceding World War I, at a time when he received decisive impulses from his fellow artist Franz Marc (1880–1916) in the Bavarian town of Sindelsdorf. The foreground of this late watercolor shows a naked shepherdess with a “golden spiral” inscribed in her upper body, perhaps in a spiritual reference to man’s connectedness with nature and the Creation. The dominant color is red, the color of passion. The eponymous horse, whose color suggests the immaterial and spiritual, acts as a twin-like counterpart to the grazing cow and at the same time as an embodied horizon. The wing-shaped, stylized tree tops in the background complete this vision full of mysterious interconnections.

IR, 2021